The Flipped Classroom Revisited
EdReach Note: This is a guest post from Jon Bergmann. Jon is a pioneer of the flipped classroom movement. You can join the Flipped Class community at FlippedClass.com, and can follow Jon on Twitter @jonbergmann.
Lately, there has been a lot of interest and controversy about the flipped classroom. For those of you who are still trying to get your mind around what the flipped classroom is, most people are currently defining the flipped classroom as a class in which the lectures are watched at home and the class time is used to work on what used to be assigned as homework. But this version of the flipped class, is only one iteration of the flipped classroom. To understand more, I would encourage you to read Aaron Sam’s post: “There is No Such Thing as THE Flipped Class.” His main point is that the flipped class is not a narrow methodology, but rather a philosophy, which has many different applications and modifications.
Let me share some more about the interest in the concept of the flipped classroom. Clearly, there is a growing interest in this idea. Below are some things I am noticing about the increased interest in the flipped classroom.
- Over a year ago, Techsmith visited Woodland Park High School where Aaron Sams and I taught and made two videos about the flipped class. One of those videos has received over 100,000 views on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H4RkudFzlc
- People are blogging about the flip with increasing frequency.
- Educational conference sessions are being conducted (I write this from the Dallas Convention Center where I will be speaking to science teachers about the flip).
- Research is being done about the effectiveness of the flip.
- Grants have been acquired to fund the expansion of the flip.
- The flip has it’s own twitter hashtag (#flipclass) and people are posting on a daily basis
- We will have our second Flipped Class Conference in the summer of 2012 (In the Chicago area)
- The increased number of people who are joining the Flipped Class Network: As of this writing we are approaching 2500 educators discussing the flipped class and how they are implementing it. http://flippedclass.com
- Aaron and I have written a book (published by ISTE.org and available June 2012) and we have a second book in the works.
So, there is a great deal of interest in the idea of the flipped class. Is the flipped class the future of education? Does it have serious flaws? Let me now address some of the controversy surrounding the flipped class. Most of what I am going to say has been said elsewhere, and probably more eloquently, by others, but I want to put in my thoughts.
As I see it, there are several misconceptions, which contribute to the controversy:
- Fear that the flipped class would lead to less engaged students who simply look at videos: This is actually the opposite of what I experienced as a teacher and what others who employ the flip experience. We are discovering that what actually happens is that student engagement and student-teacher interaction increases. I feel this is one of the greatest strengths of the flip.
- The flipped class will lead to huge classes with little engagement: The thinking here is that you could have many more students in a class if the video was doing the direct instruction. This would make education cheaper because you would be able to hire fewer teachers. One thing I say whenever I share the story of the flip with people is that I talk to every kid in every class every day. One of the hallmarks of how I have flipped my classes is this statement. But, if I had class sizes which were too large, even this methodology will fail. The key to the flipped class is actually not the videos, it is the freedom those videos give the teacher to have engaging class activities and interaction with their students.
- The flipped class is just bad lecture on video: The assumption by some is that if ALL we do is move the lecture online, we are only using technology for bad pedagogy. Their argument is that we need less lecture and more hands on, problem based, student generated, and inquiry learning. And I agree with these folks. However, I see the flip as a stepping stone for teachers who have lectured for all of their career. For them the idea of moving to an inquiry, problem based learning model would be very difficult. But the idea of simply recording what they already do and then move that to outside of the class is not a huge step.
- The flipped class hurts students who have limited access to technology: I am surprised at how often I continue to see this objection. When Aaron and I started the flip in 2007 we had a number of students without both computers and access to high speed internet. We HAD to solve this problem. We simply took 4-6 videos and burned them onto a DVD and handed the DVD’s out to students. Some students who had a computer at home but not high speed internet brought in flash drives and took home the videos that way. If you really want to see an example of how the flip is working with a school with low SES, watch this video of Greg Green’s school on the outskirts of Detroit.
I still believe in the flip. It not only can, but has changed the lives of many students. When implemented well, and in a huge variety of ways, it is helping students all over the world become better learners and preparing them for their futures.
3:30 pm
You didn’t mention one issue concerning flipclass – but first, let me give a little background. I taught HS chemistry 20 years ago before going to grad school and I have now taught research Uni chem for over 15 years. I have used video instruction and help vids since 2004. I also create video chemistry content for international publishing houses – i.e. I love video in the classroom. That said, it seems to me the biggest benefit of the “flipped model” is that it gets back to the way HS chemistry used to be taught – by engagement in the classroom. I used very little lecture when I taught HS and I remember being taught by very little lecture. We were expected to read the book and come to class prepared to participate in whatever the activity was in class that day. It seems to me this is what is going on in many flipped classes, although a video lecture has replaced book reading. Whatever method works – but I know that classroom inquiry and modeling is the best way for students to make the material accessible.
Now putting on my university professor hat – there is a huge downside to the move to video and the general move away from students being expected to learn from the written text – they are coming to college completely unable to succeed in large lecture type environments. They don’t even think about using an authoritative text to learn technical material – they either believe they can BS their way through an expectation or they believe they can wing it with Google. They are wrong and the performance is declining.
So if flipping the classroom gets the student to become more independent learners, I am for it. But please, let’s not get rid of books. They work.
4:16 pm
We gave the students options. They could choose to use the videos, or use their books. As we grew in the use of the flipped model we now believe in giving students choice. Not everybody learns well from a boo, or for that matter from a video. I had one student who asked me if he could skip the videos and jus read the textbook. My response was absolutely
4:24 pm
Prof. Fletcher- One thing you said stood out to me:
I think that you have the model backwards. In 90% percent of the cases, I would gladly unscientifically say that students are coming to college where college professors are unprepared to teach in a way that models how students want to learn. From the innovative teachers I see every day, it makes me worry that they’re going to colleges and universities where these lecture environments are boring them to tears.
My wife works at a university (two of them), and she sees professors yearning to retire because they state point-blank “I don’t know how to communicate to these kids.”
Is this the fault of the students not coming to college prepared? Or is this the fault of professors so rigid in their own methods (some- no methods of all to speak of) that they don’t change and adapt to a morphing culture?
I once got an email from someone who said that they wouldn’t use a particular web tool because the tool was designed for “teachers” and not university professors. If students are going into situations where professors won’t grow because they might be labeled a “teacher” other that what their title says- then we have far many more problems to deal with.
5:05 pm
@drezac:disqus , I agree with you, that the university needs to change faster. I have adopted many changes in the way I teach to large lecture classes, all focused around engagement. If I could find a room, I would change the large lecture hall to a room filled with tables of ten and the learning would be more activity centered. I’m an evangelist for methodical changes and my colleagues are slow to hear the Word. As I look around, I think changes at an institutional level come much faster if there is a centralized department at a university devoted to transformation – but that isn’t common.
That said, the majority of learning done by mature people still occurs by the individual and that still means finding authoritative material and learning from it. The amount of that kind of material in the more entertaining video format is still small and while I recognize the amount of video available is growing at a very high rate, not enough of it is authoritative technical material. Learners will still need to be able to find it and use it and that means books and other written material.
All that aside – I wasn’t making a judgment on the preferred method I was only commenting on the student’s abilities and that they have noticeably declined. Whether it is objectively sound or not, learning has followed a model for many years and it has worked for the US and Canada quite well. I was commenting on the drop in the ability of the incoming student – they are not as prepared to be independent learners as they were even 10 years ago and certainly weaker than 20 years ago. Can university teachers do a better job engaging their students? Yes. But we should also ask the question as to whether students can do a better job learning and that answer is also yes and evidence suggests their skills are declining.
I don’t know the answer but I am not convinced giving the student an easier option is a great recipe for success.
And this addresses @4428d534de53a3c545e419e6210e7ed6:disqus ‘s comment as well. No doubt, video presents an “easier” method for a student to engage the material and experiences tells us that humans typically prefer whatever is easier. it’s up to us, as educators, to determine if easy is the same as most beneficial. As I mentioned at the top, I am a prodigious user of video instruction where it applies but even I am not sure it is the most beneficial approach to creating a content-prepared, independent learner. That seems like a fundamental question that needs answered soon.
5:14 pm
Let me give one concrete example – I like to start every large lecture with something like a SymphonyofScience video. (you can find them on Youtube – by a one man wondermakingmachine who goes by the name Melodysheep) I’ve noticed that my students start to add their own videos like this to our class Facebook page and when I track them, I find many students use them – which is a really great thing in a general intro science class where the students are not really required to go beyond basic learning. I have done surveys to learn how my students prepare themselves for certain assigned tasks and it’s not uncommon for me to get feedback that several students have watched the whole series of SofS vids thinking they were doing actual “studying.” I’m glad they are engaged in the general material but they seem to lack the ability to discern growing their awareness and appreciation for science versus learning to actually do science.
My concern is that they confuse putting in time watching with actual learning. Video is often confused with entertainment and while they can be the same – learning must involve some form of assessment. We need to spend more time talking about the learning process and promoting consumer awareness.
10:17 pm
I think that the skill of back-channeling is very much something that could be harnessed in college at this point, if professors know how to use this. Allow kids to use twitter during class, or Todaysmeet.com and if there are videos or lectures, you can engage them by moderating during the chat. I’ve seen third grade teachers use this successfully. If they can do this, certainly it could be used in a college setting.
I love http://www.symphonyofscience.com , BTW. I am a science teacher by trade. I created a channel for science, which is now just being taken over by students, as a place to start inquiry in the classroom. It’s at http://www.youtube.com/phenomenascience The idea here- is all discrepant events. We’re just getting started, but hopefully science teachers see this a place where it might start a conversation.
Dan
5:05 pm
I agree – especially in large lectures, the idea of a backchannel is interesting. I’ve used a Twitter back channel in my 300 person lecture this past semester but with limited success. I’ve use Facebook, Twitter, mass texting and a stand alone website for communicating with students in real time for the past 3 years and by far, Twitter is the least popular with my college students. I am seeing the same thing with a Twitter back channel – very few students are choosing to use it while Facebook is insanely active and even personal texting to me (at surprising hours of the day) is much more common. I don’t get it but that is the fact, although with each semester, a few more adopt Twitter.
But I’ve experienced a downside with these tools. I experimented with using cell phones and computers in place of clickers this past semester and received a record number of complaints from students about the increased distraction level. It seems there are many students who bring a computer to class and use it productively, but encouraging these tools to come to class for purposes of only communication 4-5 times an hour provided too large a temptation for student’s attention to wander. Add to that, the average score on the first assessment was 2+ standard deviations below my historical average (of over 4,000 students.) I didn’t attempt to discover a direct correlation but the performance of the students on what is pretty simple material was so different from what I’ve seen in past semesters, caused me to cancel the project and go back to clickers. And since so few have chosen to use Twitter on their cells for the backchannel, I’m reconsidering the entire strategy for next semester.
I love the use of backchannel and it works well outside of class in the form of texting but so far, pretty mixed results in class with Twitter.
8:13 pm
I agree that Twitter is tough to use sometimes. Some people don’t like filling up their Twitter stream with chat. Todaysmeet.com is awesome for something like that.
Also – if you haven’t tried out Socrative.com, it’s a great way to create short responses using people’s cell phones. Much simpler than clickers. Really easy to manage and create. It’s designed for situations exactly like yours. Plus, they give you lots of data- which you could use, I suppose, for grading.
8:13 pm
I agree that Twitter is tough to use sometimes. Some people don’t like filling up their Twitter stream with chat. Todaysmeet.com is awesome for something like that.
Also – if you haven’t tried out Socrative.com, it’s a great way to create short responses using people’s cell phones. Much simpler than clickers. Really easy to manage and create. It’s designed for situations exactly like yours. Plus, they give you lots of data- which you could use, I suppose, for grading.
3:25 pm
Is this a blog? No discussion at all? Huh.